Ralph Gilbert
I am a figurative, narrative painter, draughtsman and muralist. I studied at the Chouinard Art Institute (now the California Institute of the Arts) in Los Angeles and received the Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of California at Santa Barbara. In 2005 I was awarded the Edwin Austin Abbey Memorial Fund Fellowship in mural painting at the National Academy of Design in New York.
My experience as a public artist whose work deals with diverse cultures, history and connection to communities is deep. I have completed large public projects for the St. Paul Union Depot in Minnesota, the Piedmont Park Conservancy in Atlanta, the Helene S. Mills Senior Center of Fulton County and a series of 23 paintings for the Milken Family Foundation in Santa Monica, California. The St. Paul Union Depot murals were funded in part by the National Transportation Administration and the Ramsey County Railroad Authority. The themes were based on the history of the railroad and of the region and the works reside in a significant and beautiful structure in a great American city. The Piedmont Park Conservancy mural, on a barrel-vaulted ceiling in an historic turn-of-the-century beaux-arts building, is a depiction of Atlanta’s version of New York’s Central Park, both having been designed by the legendary Frederick Law Olmstead. The Mills Senior Center mural is in the historic Martin Luther King Jr. district, the birthplace of Dr. King, and features members of a proud, diverse and active community of seniors. The Milken Foundation project was historical and, in an evocative style, illustrated the history of Jewish music in America for the Milken Archive of Jewish Music.
My private studio work is more intuitive and stresses the evocative over the illustrative. While many of my paintings and watercolors are subjective, I continue to draw from nature, as reflected in my sketchbook pages, figure and animal drawings. I believe that art must be of its own time, though I highly respect and draw from the great traditions of painting and drawing from times past.
Categories: Visual Arts
